


Suspended

by divingforstones



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post S7, References to The Dead of Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-05
Updated: 2014-05-05
Packaged: 2018-01-22 02:03:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1571987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/divingforstones/pseuds/divingforstones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hathaway loses control in the interrogation room and has to face the consequences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to wendymr who beta'ed this in such an encouraging and helpful way.
> 
> This story has references to childhood sexual abuse of a canon minor character. Nothing descriptive.

******  
**

Robbie pauses on his way out of their office, because James, pulling on his suit jacket to follow him, has been arrested by the sound of his desk phone. James settles himself into the jacket, drops back into his desk chair, mouths _one minute_ and starts frowning already into the middle distance, fingers reaching for a pen, focusing on whatever the voice in his ear is relaying to him.

It’s more than one minute, it transpires. Robbie, waiting for his sergeant outside the interrogation room, leans against the one-way glass and uses the time to study Wilson, who’s already in there sitting at the table. He's a rather arrogant, frustrating side-issue to their most recent closed case. Nothing to do with the case, as it turned out in the end. Just an unexpected find, stumbling across the evidence that also puts Wilson securely in the picture for a recent spate of burglaries.  James’s find really. Somehow Wilson, not a stranger to interrogation rooms, has always managed to evade retribution until now.  Largely because he never gets his hands dirty himself, Robbie would bet. Uses others for that. But this time, everyone’s fairly convinced  that they’ve got him. Smug as he still looks.

James appears, striding rather rapidly, but his gaze isn’t checking in with Robbie’s as it normally would as he approaches. Instead his eyes are reaching somewhere past him. He stops at the door and opens it, a signal to the young uniformed constable to come out. Then he closes it again, his eyebrows and head tilt asking permission.

Robbie, surprised, considers only briefly and then nods at him. And James pauses another moment, his hand on the door handle, gazing past Robbie’s shoulder now, with his eyes narrowed. Then he shoulders the door open and heads in.

So he wants to have a go at this himself. Well, all right. He’s perfectly able.

But as Robbie moves back over to the window and takes up position, he feels slightly disconcerted, all the same. Something is suddenly just a little off about James’s demeanour. Well, they don’t, of course, carry out all interrogations together. Not by any means. And they hadn’t discussed a strategy for this. But Robbie had planned that they’d be feeling their way through this one together and so he’d just naturally assumed that James would know that.

Because they generally are on the same page when it comes to the two of them dealing with other people. It usually takes no more than a glance in James’s direction for Robbie to delegate, or suggest their next tack, whether they’re dealing with suspects or victims, anyone appended to either, hapless bystanders who need to be questioned or even slightly tiresome chief superintendents _…_ And as if the very thought has summoned her up, there’s the sound of a distinctive footfall and Innocent appears, her intent unmistakeable. Robbie moves further along, away from the door, to allow her access to watch James too.

James seems to be having a bit of trouble already, somehow. He just seems a bit distracted and restless. He’s pacing as he rattles off a series of questions, and still looks rather wired up as he stops beside Wilson to finally wait for his answers.

Wilson, a proper slippery customer, starts off okay. Smoothly disdainful and affecting amusement, but condescending to provide some information. James waits, standing rather rigidly with his hands jammed in his pockets, for Wilson to get to the heart of the matter. But then Wilson must drop his voice very low because it fades, although he’s obviously still speaking, perhaps whispering, and he’s gazing up at James with something of a slightly suggestive, conspiratorial smirk in his expression.

There’s no rational way that they’ll be able to make out his words, but both Robbie, and Innocent beside him, lean forward slightly, in an instinctive effort to hear better. And James does the same, starting to lean down towards Wilson. But then he stills abruptly. And suddenly Robbie is pushing past Innocent, even as she reaches to pound on the glass, and then he’s fumbling at the door handle with fingers made clumsy with urgency and shock.

Because James has Wilson up out of the seat and he’s slammed him against the wall.

===

It takes a considerable effort to get James off a completely unresisting Wilson. Wilson is just pinned against the wall with James’s bent arm pressed against his chest, but James jerks his other elbow back, hard, when Robbie first tries to grab him. _Fuck_. On the second attempt, it seems to be Robbie’s voice, his shouted command, that makes James abruptly let go, rather than the grasp that Robbie has taken on his sergeant’s upper arm. When James swings around, though, releasing Wilson, yanking his arm from Robbie’s hold, he doesn’t seem to be seeing Robbie somehow, as he turns his head past him and makes for the door. It actually makes Robbie stop, James’s expression; Robbie stills, startled, despite having every intention of going after James and just grabbing hold of him—

“ _Lewis_ ,” comes Innocent’s voice. He turns his head towards her, still distracted. “Take Mr Wilson back down to the custody suite.”

Robbie stares at her, fully focusing on her now. What? “No. No, I need to—”

“You need to _take_ Mr Wilson back down to the custody suite.” And she’s gone out of the room, after James. Leaving Robbie with Wilson, with the stunned young constable, and with no other option.

It takes a while. It seems to take forever. Realistically, all he has to do is escort Wilson, see him secured and brief the custody sergeant to call a doctor to get him properly checked over just in case. There’s an overwhelming need to do this by the book. But now, of course, is the time that Wilson chooses to request the solicitor he has previously rejected. Well, naturally he does. He’s no stranger to the system. He knows exactly how he can capitalise on this. He’ll hardly be able to believe that his half-baked tactics have yielded such results. On James. _James_ of all people. It’s bewildering.

When Robbie finally gets to Innocent’s office, her PA is mercifully absent. The door to the inner sanctum is shut, but he can see through the surrounding glass, his view partially obscured by the tilt of the blinds. And while Innocent is sitting, James is standing, his back view very stiff. Robbie knocks. He knocks again and then he just goes right ahead and opens the door anyway. “Ma’am—” But Innocent is on her feet, coming around the desk and approaching him, moving swiftly so that he automatically backs out of her way, out of the doorway. Then she closes it, firmly, she and Robbie in the outer office and James alone on the other side. James, who hasn’t turned to look at Robbie at all.

“Go back to your office, Lewis.” And she’s perfectly calm in a particularly deliberate and formal way that bodes absolutely no good for James.

“Ma’am?” It’s meant to sound like an enquiry, but it somehow comes out more like an appeal.  James is going to make this worse for himself if Robbie can’t mitigate it somehow. He’s going to make it worse and get himself—well Robbie finds he doesn’t quite want to contemplate the worst case scenarios here.

“Go on. Or—well, you’ll need to get that looked at.” She angles her eyebrows at Robbie’s left cheekbone and Robbie registers that a vaguely distracting ache there must have translated into something visible to others. “And then get your statement written up.”

He’s going to have to write a witness account. On what he’s seen James do. How can he—Christ. And what the bloody hell is _wrong_ with James anyway? He needs to get in there and—“I’m his governor.”

“And _I’m_ both of yours. _Your_ services as Sergeant Hathaway’s governor are not currently required. So get that looked at and write up your statement. Preferably in that order.” And he’s trapped. In a battle of pronouns, and pulling rank, she’s always going to win. There’s nothing else he can think of to say that wouldn’t rile her fruitlessly and risk making things even worse for James in this so-critical conversation that he’s about to have with Innocent. By himself.

Then Innocent stops in the act of turning back towards her office door. “Robbie?” He recognises an off-the-record request when he hears one. He looks at her. “He did snap—very suddenly, didn’t he?”

“Yeah,” Robbie says, with certainty, rather relieved that she’d seen that too. She nods at him and heads back into her office. He catches a glimpse of James through the door before she closes it, and he’s still standing there staring straight ahead. Everything about his bearing tells Robbie that Innocent has absolutely no chance whatsoever of getting anything out of him at the moment.

===

Robbie gets precisely nowhere with his statement. _DS Hathaway_ , he writes. And then it hits him again. And his hand jerks a bit as the pen comes to an involuntary halt, smudging the ink. It’s the adrenaline, he supposes. That and—well, what the hell _was_ that with James? What exactly is he saying to Innocent right now? Between the frame of mind that he seemed to be in and Robbie’s own experience of what James can be like when something’s really disturbed him—Christ, he could be saying anything. If she uses the threat of dismissal, would James just overreact and save her the trouble—

For a moment Robbie toys with the mad idea of sending him a text. As if James is in a position to answer it. What would he even say? _Keep your ruddy temper. Be deferential. Act remorseful. And what the hell was that all about? Get back here the second she’s done with you because you can bloody well try to explain yourself to me next._ Maybe, though, just the feel of the phone vibrating in his pocket could remind James that he isn’t alone in this, that please just not to make things even worse for himself... But it’s all pointless anyway. Because he can see that James’s mobile phone is just lying on his desk.

 _“_ Robbie?” Laura is standing in front of his own desk, staring at him. It’s obviously not the first time she’s tried to get his attention. “Did James really just—” So it’s all around the station. Already.

“Yeah.”

“God. Well—how bad _is_ this?”

“Well, he did it right in front of Innocent, for starters.”

“ _God,”_ says Laura again. Then her focus narrows and her gaze shifts to just below Robbie’s eye. “And you got in the middle, did you?”

“Sort of, yeah.”

“Want me to see to it?” she offers.

“It’s fine.” He meets her inquiring gaze and gives her a half-hearted shrug.

She bites her lip. “He's not going to lose his job over this, Robbie.” She’s making an attempt to reassure him. “Or even his rank?” She’s even less sure on that one. “It’ll—he’ll get through it. He’ll be all right again. Eventually.” But she’s spent too long in working in a police station to be able to believe her own words that easily. And she’s always been too direct to be any good at platitudes.

Robbie’s too distracted to even try to reassure her back. He’s gone beyond even thinking of the possible consequences into something that’s troubling him even more. _It was the way he looked. You didn’t see the way he looked._ “It’s just—James. You know,” he says, inadequately.

Laura looks at him for a long moment.  Then she gives a small shake of her head. “Come on. Come and let me put something on that.”

“It’s fine.”

“Let me do what I can for you and it might land up a bit less visible. Attract less attention.” He’s about to protest again, but he suddenly wouldn’t mind the grounding of Laura’s practical ministrations. And she’s right about the need for this to look as unobtrusive as possible. She just doesn’t know quite how right she is.

“Come on,” she says again, tilting her head towards the door. Robbie rises to follow her.

But it turns out to be a bad idea, after all. For when he gets back to his office afterwards, that mobile phone is no longer on his sergeant’s desk. Because James has obviously been and gone.

===

The statement is a struggle to put together, but it’ll be the price of Robbie’s release to go after his sergeant. His sergeant who presumably is still his sergeant— It doesn’t help that he hasn’t had an answer to his call. Although it’s probably best to wait until this conversation can be had in person, anyway. He’s finally signing his name to his account of what James has done when his desk phone goes. It’s Innocent’s PA. The monthly area meeting. It’s their turn to host it this month and he’d clean forgotten. Well, he’ll catch Innocent and make his apologies in person on the way out.

“ _No,_ Robbie. I need you here.” She’s keeping her voice low but Robbie can see full well that she’s perfectly adamant.

The assembled senior staff, from this and other stations, are provided a convenient hum of chatter. Robbie pitches his own voice low, for a fresh attempt. “If I was on a case I wouldn’t even be here—”

“But you’re not on a case,” says Innocent inexorably. Then she raises her voice into the familiar addressing-the-ranks tones. “Well, good afternoon—”

Robbie knows when he’s beaten. It’s a feeling of helplessness that he seems to be coming up against repeatedly today. He doesn’t know how she expects him to make a useful contribution to this meeting.  But he pulls out a chair and drops down into it. Then he pulls out his phone and jabs out a text: _You go home. You stay there. You don’t start drinking and you stay there_. He doesn’t know why it’s important to say that about the drinking, but he’s ignored his instincts once already this morning when it comes to James. And just look where that’s led.

When the interminable meeting finally draws to a close, Robbie’s watch informs him that, actually, it’s only been an hour. But Robbie’s had no reply to his text, so God only knows what James has been thinking or doing for that hour. It’s his awareness of that that makes Robbie wait for Innocent as she detains one of the chief superintendents from another station to put some request to him. But he tunes in in a hurry to what she’s saying to CS Bradford when he catches the words “…panel for his disciplinary hearing…” Oh, Christ. James.

As soon as Bradford, having obviously agreed to the request, has departed, Innocent turns enquiring eyebrows on Robbie. Robbie’s had enough. “Ma’am. Look—would you just _tell_ me…?”

“Oh.” He sees Innocent’s face soften a bit as she understands. “No, I thought he would have told you—I didn’t mean to keep you in the dark—He’s been suspended, Robbie. A full three weeks. Pending a disciplinary hearing. I did genuinely need you to be at this meeting. Look, you can go—”

And he’s gone.

===

James’s car is outside his flat, which is something. Robbie gives himself a moment to sit in his own car and take a deep breath before he gets out. He’s just not quite sure how this is going to go. Now that the urgency in locating James, in making sure that he’s physically okay, is abating, he finds his thoughts returning to how suddenly things had gone so very wrong this morning. How James had looked just after. The way he’d sort of looked right through Robbie, confused. Almost as  if he didn’t really register who Robbie was for that one moment.

James has the sense not to look in the least bit surprised to find Robbie on his doorstep already, a couple of hours before their working day should officially end. He just steps back, without meeting Robbie’s look at all, holds the door open and, once Robbie is inside, turns and leads the way into the living area of his flat. Robbie pauses only to secure the front door and follows him, so he almost trips over him when James suddenly stops dead, turning abruptly, to face Robbie, very close to him. He’s belatedly registered something about Robbie’s appearance. “Did he do _that_ to your face? Wilson?”

“No,” says Robbie evenly.

“Oh, you just _happened_ to get an injury in the normal course of duty in the last couple of hours?” James accuses. He’s becoming quite agitated already.

“No. I got an elbow to the face all right. Wasn’t in the normal course of duty. Unless you call restraining my sergeant the normal course of duty.”

James blinks rapidly, suddenly uncertain. “I—”

“You did that, yes.”

“I— _sorry.”_ He bites off the last word.

“Yeah. I know you are. Would help your case a whole lot more with Innocent if you were half as sorry about what you did to Wilson.” But James isn’t listening. He’s reaching out his fingers to the welt on Robbie’s cheekbone, edging his fingers around the stiffening, sore area, very gently. His eyes are fixed on the injury, not on Robbie’s eyes. He seems to be almost in a trance. Robbie just stands there and lets him explore it with his barely-there touch. He waits.

He may not know what’s going on, but one thing he does know is that it’s more important than it’s ever been, right at this moment, not to push James.

===

They’re both sitting on James’s couch now, but James isn’t saying anything. It’s a bit hard to know where to start when he seems to be in this rather fragile state. Maybe right at the point where things had seemed to take a turn for the worse this morning. And this needs to be done in a matter-of-fact manner that doesn’t betray to him how much he’s worrying Robbie. “So, what was that phone call about?” Robbie asks.

“Just about testifying in the Harris case in a month’s time.”

“Okay,” Robbie says, slowly, casting his mind back. Well, they’d known James would be called for that. Not the easiest case, but he certainly hadn’t noticed anything particular at the time that had upset James about it. Nothing to account for this.

James shoots him a glance, knowing what he’s trying to figure out. “The prosecutor,” he says shortly. “They mentioned who’ll be taking it. Same as in Zelinsky’s trial.”

Oh. Oh, _hell._

“I’ll handle it,” James adds, rather indifferently, at the look on Robbie’s face. “It was just unexpected.”

 _It was just in your head going back in there. Us interrogating Zelinsky together for all that time. Often in the same bloody interrogation room_. No wonder he’d seemed thrown after the call. And had had the urge to get away from Robbie’s scrutiny. He’s always kept the real horrors of that case shut up inside himself. But what he should have done is handed the interrogation over. “You could’ve taken a few minutes to get your head together after that, you know.  Or let me take it? Christ,” Robbie can’t help saying, “it would have saved us a whole lot of problems now, James.”

James stares at him in what seems like rather unwarranted disbelief. Robbie’s hardly said anything James wasn’t aware of, after all. But when he speaks again, he seems to have headed off down a different path. “I could have hurt your eye.”

“Yeah,” Robbie acknowledges. “But you didn’t. And I think we have ourselves enough difficulties here without borrowing trouble, don’t you?”

James is gazing at him now, his expression quite unreadable. “What do you mean?” he says, after a moment, frowning as if something doesn’t add up.

Robbie, assuming that he’s used an unfamiliar saying and confused the lad, in the way that he still occasionally does, tries to clarify what he’s said. “Well, I just meant that we need to deal with the problems that we actually have.”

“But you’re not saying _you._ You keep saying _we._ You said _ourselves_.”

“Did I?”

“Yes. Like we’re both in this together. Instead of just me.”

Does it matter so much which pronouns he’s apparently using? But he can see that this is important to James somehow. “Well, must just be the way I feel, then, that,” says Robbie matter-of-factly.

“Is it?”

“’Course.” But Robbie can feel that he’s suddenly on shifting quicksand here. In his efforts to get James to somehow properly trust him, this bit—Robbie letting James know for sure that he is, without fail, instinctively on his side—is for some reason absolutely essential, right at this moment, to James. So maybe he’ll just keep on confirming it for as long as James needs him to.

James’s voice has a shake to it when he finally speaks again. “I do—something like _this_ —and you’ll still say— _us?_ ”

“Yeah. I will,” Robbie says simply. And then James, taking Robbie completely by surprise, drops his head on Robbie’s shoulder, one arm making its way around Robbie. “All right,” says Robbie, getting an arm around him too and returning the clasp so James can feel he’s being held right back. “There you are, now, lad. ‘S’all right.”

He doesn’t really know what else to say now, so he just sits and holds onto him.

===

It’s gone quite silent in James’s flat now.

James puts a mug of tea on the coffee table in front of Robbie and drops back down on the couch without a word. He hasn’t even made one for himself. Robbie doesn’t want tea either but it had seemed best just to agree when James had suddenly released himself and had stood up, looking down at Robbie and making the offer. He’d probably wanted a minute to himself, as such.

Robbie looks at him now, right beside him. He could take it as a good sign that James is still sitting very close. Just as close as he usually does, in fact. But James isn’t looking back at Robbie, not really. His eyes are darting about a bit. This still doesn’t add up. There’s still something very wrong here.  Something James is thinking about and not saying. “And what happened then, James?” Robbie asks softly. “What did Wilson say to you?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Look. James—”

“I don’t, honestly—Innocent didn’t believe me, either.” Utter resignation in his tone.

“Stop that, stop putting me in the same box as Innocent. I’m not here for that. If you say you don’t remember, then fine, I’ll believe you don’t remember. Okay?”

James, surprised, gives him a nod. His whole posture seems to soften with relief. Robbie gives him a moment to take that in. That Robbie’s really not here as his governor. Then he asks, carefully, “So, what was it?”

“He whispered.” And James stops. Robbie waits. He hears a car go past in the afternoon quiet. The sound of its engine fades away. Robbie doesn’t know if James is listening to it too, if he’s waiting for that sound to fade to nothing. It’s hard to tell because James is gazing across the room and he doesn’t seem to be quite here. Part of him has gone right away from Robbie now. “He whispered—something,” James says at last. “I don’t know what. It was just the look on his face, I think, and the way he brought me in closer by whispering. Closer to him. It reminded me—”

“Of Zelinsky?” Robbie offers gently when he stops again.

“No. Crevecoeur.”

Oh. Robbie feels suddenly ill. _No_.

“It reminded me of—I was twelve. I’d been having piano lessons for a while. In the summerhouse?”

“Yeah,” Robbie manages.

“And he—Mortmaigne—he’d stopped instructing me and he whispered something, so I came in closer to hear him and then—it was just very confusing. I thought he went to move his hand—I really thought—so I got up and backed off and took my music, I don’t know why I stopped to take my music, but then I just left.”

_Oh, thank God._

“So I tried, I did try to tell my father. When he got home. I’d waited and I tried to explain—”

“And did he not believe you, James?” Robbie asks gently when he seems to be losing him into silence again.

“No he did—then. Just not later. Never after that first bit when I told him. He believed me at first and said I was right to tell him but then when he spoke to Mortmaigne—God, this is all years ago, I was twelve when we left, I hadn’t been near the place in twenty years until—”

“Until we got the case and you went back.” _The same bloody day you’d had to testify in Zelinsky’s trial. I sent you. Because I had no idea that place meant a thing to you. How could I? So I sent you. I sent you by yourself._

“James the Just, that’s what he called me. Mortmaigne. When he recognised me. That’s what he always used to call me. That’s what he called me back then when my father spoke to him about it. Laughing. ‘Big sense of injustice for your tender years, eh, James, righting imaginary wrongs? Always been a fanciful lad, hasn’t he? Should hear some of the games he’s dreamt up for Scarlett.’ That’s what he said.”

“What do you mean, James? He said that to you? When your father spoke to him? How come you were there?”

“He took me with him. My father. When he went to speak to Mortmaigne.” _Oh, the stupid bastard_. “And when he made me describe it again—in front of Mortmaigne—I could see how it sounded—how nothing had happened, really, I supposed, it had just _felt_ like he was going to—and then there had been Paul, you see, I’d just thought that one day when I’d been early for a lesson, that I’d seen—but Paul had said that I didn’t, I was wrong.”

_Except you weren’t._

“And then my father.” James stops and swallows hard, looking straight ahead now again. “He started to back down, after all. He apologised for me. Made me apologise too. He must’ve thought worse had happened to me, and then thought that what did happen—didn’t matter so much. He was sorry he’d said anything.”

Jesus Christ.

“And it seemed to turn into an argument about other things then too, well, as much of an argument as anyone could have with Mortmaigne, more like my father was trying to appease him, something about some quibble over mismanagement of the estate. I didn’t quite understand, but then Mortmaigne, he said, ‘I’m sure you wouldn’t want to stay in any case.’ That’s how he told us we were to leave. ‘With young James so uncomfortable…’ But it wasn’t so long after my mother had—so I really didn’t want to leave—”

Robbie stops himself from asking about his mother when nothing more is forthcoming. She’d been completely gone by that stage, that much is clear. And for all that James has rarely mentioned his father over the years, he’s never mentioned his mother.

“And he was furious about it. My father. Would never discuss it from that day forth. Well, I went off to school soon after and he was just—more and more distant every time I came back. Depressed, maybe. I don’t know. He never had a permanent job like that again, anyway.”

And James has ground to a complete halt now. He turns to gaze at Robbie, slightly desperate, like he really needs to hear—God, what does he need to hear? Why’s he focusing on how his father felt? Robbie looks back at him and tries to feel his way.

“So you lost Crevecoeur. You lost the friends you’d grown up with there. Like Scarlett and Paul. You lost the home you knew and you were coming back to a strange one whenever you came back from school. And you thought your father had lost his job because of you.” _And was probably resentful by the sounds of it._ “You felt you were responsible for all of that.” James doesn’t nod but his eyes are fixed on Robbie’s. He’s so still.

“And you thought that you’d been wrong to have said anything, that there’d been no need, no need to do it because no-one had been at risk of any harm? That what you thought?”

“I wished for a long time I’d just kept quiet. I thought I’d been wrong and overreacted and ruined everything. For nothing.”

“Thank God you didn’t,” says Robbie shakily, “keep quiet.” _Your friend Paul probably did._

“But I didn’t stop it, anyway.” James’ says, very low. “All that and I didn’t stop it happening. It wasn’t worth it. All that and it did no good at all. When I saw Briony’s arms—”

“Of course it was worth it,” says Robbie in disbelief.

“How?”

“Because it meant it didn’t happen to you.”

“Yeah.” James releases it on a sigh. And then Robbie understands. James gets that, of course. He knows that full well. But his father had acted for years as if losing his job, the cottage, his position had mattered more to him than what could have happened to James. That was the message James had received.

And at that crucial moment, when it had been Montaigne against his son, he’d made it apparent that he would have been willing to stay if it had been his choice, to put any fears for his son aside. To risk James’s welfare, let himself be convinced there was no risk really, so he could stay. He hadn’t had that visceral fear of any harm befalling James that should have made his son his one priority. James didn’t matter—quite that much. His father had acted, then, and in all the years that followed, as if everything else, the impact on him, had mattered more than James.

And that man had been pretty much all that James had had.

“If I’d made a better job of telling them,” James says, startling Robbie. “Or else not decided that I’d been wrong then I would have had someone look into Mortmaigne when I was old enough—”

“First you blame yourself, for years, for speaking up and being wrong, and then, when it turns out you’re right, you blame yourself for not saying more instead, sooner.” Robbie doesn’t even make it a question. He knows it’s true.

“That’s about the strength of it, yeah,” James says, rather helplessly.

“No, James. No. You told an adult. Hard enough to do, I’m sure.” _Impossible, quite often. And_ _not your fault what the bloody adults did then._ And suddenly Robbie’s lost him again. James is gazing out the window, probably remembering working himself up to tell his father. And all the catastrophic consequences of that.

“James, you were twelve years old. Twelve.”

“It’s just—if I’d managed to—Briony’s family came after us at Lodge Farm. So if I’d just said enough then to convince anyone—”

 _Oh, you had no hope. No hope at all. “_ James, nobody wanted to be convinced. None of them were willing to see what was happening.”

“I-”

“And d’you think that’s fair, anyway?” Robbie asks. “You. Blaming a twelve-year-old?” James looks rather startled. “Don’t tell me it’s different when it’s you. I know that. But doesn’t apply to this part. You were still twelve. Is there any other twelve-year-old you’d tell that he was to blame for this?”

“No?” James actually looks quite confused at the realisation.

“I’ve said this to you before—” But Robbie still tries to deliver it as gently as possible this time. “Why d’you have to be better?”

 _“_ I know you did. I remember. And you said I wasn’t to blame. For any of it.”

“That’s right.” Well. At least he remembers that.

“It’s the closest to an absolution I’ve had. I do try—to believe it.”

“I—” But it’s making Robbie choke up a bit now. That his words had mattered quite so much as it turns out they had. An absolution. “I wish you could,” he says huskily. “Believe it.”

_===_

If it was a different time of the year, if it wasn’t summer, it’d be getting dark now. Dusk won’t even start to fall for hours yet. It just feels like it’s been an incredibly long day already. God only knows what it feels like to James. Robbie has vaguely registered the sounds of James’s neighbours on his street returning from work, some of them heading back out, going about their lives on what vaguely looks like a lovely summer’s evening. It makes it all the more extraordinary that so much has been turned around in just one day, that there’s so much uncertainty now hanging over James’s future.

James’s thoughts must have turned in the same direction as they sit here in silence now. “What do you think they’ll do to me?” he asks. “This panel?”

Robbie really doesn’t want to voice the worst of it. Dismissal doesn’t seem that likely. But—well, it’s already occurred to him that James would be unlikely to hang around in the police force to serve out a demotion. He’d probably work his notice period and be done with it. But there’s no point raising that prospect with James just now. “Look, if Innocent had any idea what was really going on for you in that room—” _Then she’d handle all this rather differently from what she’s going to do._

“I’m _not telling her anything.”_

“No. No, of course not.” Robbie pauses, thinking. He can make a very good guess what Innocent’s likely next steps will be, dealing with James. She’s already pulling people in from outside for his panel. Everything done completely by the book. No suggestion of impropriety in how she handles this.

She, or one of the people on that panel, is going to recommend that anger management group that one of the DCs who Robbie supervises had had to attend last year. For James. Who would then have to sit in a room with a group of strangers for however many sessions and find some way to talk about triggers and strategies while this, all of this, the actual trigger for what happened, goes through his head. And this is miles away from an anger management problem, but Innocent has no way of knowing that. Well, no. That’s not about to happen to James.

Because Robbie’s not going to let it.

“What about,” he suggests to James, “if you were to offer to go to counselling? They just send a report back at the end that doesn’t break your confidentiality, you know.” _One to one. Has to be better. James could keep his privacy because Innocent would never know the details of what was discussed._ Robbie’s been copied into those reports with other officers who’ve worked under him. The police psychologist basically just confirms attendance, and that “a number of issues” have been discussed. Gives a recommendation in terms of fitness to resume duty. Nothing detailed about what’s been discussed unless James gives permission. They’re not allowed to. And James agreeing to this would help because—well, what James doesn’t realise is that another option this panel might go for is mandatory counselling. But—

“Nothing happened to me,” James says briefly.

“James, sometimes an attempt like that—” But James has had the same training updates over recent years as Robbie has. He knows.

“I don’t want to. Don’t need to. It’s all years ago. Not something I think about now.”

“All right.” Robbie, knowing there’s no point in disputing that stance now, capitulates immediately. Because you don’t push people into talking about these things unless they’re ready for it. It’s not the right way to go about it _._ He knows _that_ all too well that from his own unwanted experience of that bereavement counselling _._ And he also just knows James. It’s still a flaming miracle that he’s opened up to Robbie today. It’ll take James a while to deal with the fact that he’s even done that. Robbie’s going to have to be damn sure he tries to treat him very much the same for the next while, for all that his protective instincts are up. James will need things back on an even keel. But for now, there’s still the thorny question of that ruddy inescapable panel. _Dismissal. Demotion. Group Sessions. Mandatory Counselling. Bloody hell._

And James, who is really in no fit state to even think about any of this, is just looking utterly weary now, utterly spent.

“You want to get some rest, lad?”

“No.” He looks a bit ill at the thought of it. He doesn’t want to be left by himself, Robbie realises. Left to his own thoughts.

“All right.” But nor he is likely to admit to his need and agree to come back to Robbie’s for the night. So probably best just to keep it very casual. “You hungry? Probably time we ate something, anyway. Let me—”

James doesn’t put up any protest. By the time the food that Robbie orders has arrived, Robbie’s turned on the TV and they’re ostensibly watching some documentary, although it’s unlikely that either of them has understood much of it. James doesn’t really stir. Not when the food arrives, not to do more than pick at it, and not even when Robbie gets up to clear. He watches Robbie, though, as Robbie moves around, ditching containers, washing plates and eventually getting two bottles of beer from James’s fridge. Robbie feels James’s eyes just follow him as he moves around James’s own kitchen. His eyes are the only part of James that are still moving. He really does look shattered.

“Thought I wasn’t allowed to drink?” he enquires, after Robbie puts those two bottles down on the coffee table and sits back down on the couch, still very close to him.

“Yeah. Well.” Robbie rubs the back of his own neck, with one hand, rather embarrassed now by that text.

“It’s okay,” says James, gazing at Robbie. His head is lying right back against the top of the couch by now, his long body slouched down in a pose that’s still more spent than relaxed. “I didn’t mind. You saying that. It was sort of a relief to get orders from you again.”

Robbie frowns at him. “You hardly thought you’d lose your place as me sergeant—” _Not by my choice, anyway._

“I just figured you’d be disappointed in me. In what I’d done.” He sounds as if he’s still checking that out slightly. Making sure it isn’t true.

“James.” Robbie doesn’t know how he can say that after all that James has explained, all that was behind this. James still somehow doesn’t quite feel that he’d had a right, that twelve-year-old, to protest and react so hard, after all the consequences that had, so terribly unfairly, descended on his head for that. All that punishment it must have felt like. He might know he was right now  but he doesn’t seem to feel it properly. It’s not something Robbie can hope to get through to him in the space of one afternoon, either. But even if they never talk about this again—and knowing, James, it’s not unlikely—there are other ways to get through to him how much his wellbeing actually matters, how much he matters. How much he matters to Robbie, that’s a good starting place.

“C’mon now, lad. Do me a favour, would you? Just put your head down and try and let yourself stop thinking for a bit, yeah?”

James frowns at him, unsure. Robbie, holding his gaze, raises his arm and drops it along the back of the couch, opening a further space for James. An invitation. If he wants it. And James makes a small noise of relief and drops his head sideways onto Robbie’s shoulder.

Robbie tucks his arm around him, pressing James in against his side. “That’s it. Just try and rest, okay? I’ll watch this, I’m fine here, no need to worry about me, just try and rest a bit.”

He’s thoroughly relieved when James gives a shaky sigh and gives in at last. The slight movement of his head suggests he’s settling in. James badly needs this. The rest and the contact, both.  Robbie rather welcomes the contact himself after all the shocks of the day. His own head is almost spinning at this point in a way that has nothing to do with the barely-touched beer.  He reckons he might just sleep too if he hadn’t got so much to think about.

Because this is going to get worse for James before it gets better, unless Robbie can work out the right way to intervene. And it’s going to be bloody tricky to do that.

===

James, when he’d eventually wakes late that evening, is so dazed that he doesn’t need much persuasion to simply head for bed. And he doesn’t really protest much either when Robbie lets him know that he’s staying, that he’ll sleep on the couch. James makes an effort, turning back, to offer up his bed. But Robbie rises and steers him firmly out of the room. When he reappears a few minutes later, Robbie just relieves him of the bundle of spare bedding that he’s returned with, drops it on the couch and propels him back out in the direction of his bedroom once again.

Robbie bids him a firm goodnight this time, in the narrow interior hallway. By James’s standards, that was very little resistance, he’s thinking, as he heads back to see what can be done with this couch. But then there’s a tap on his shoulder and, as he turns, James is getting his arms around Robbie, his head down, his expression hidden. He seems to be trying to say something with his embrace. Robbie just pulls him in closer so that he can find a place for his head on Robbie’s shoulder one more time tonight. If he likes. He does seem to want to.

===

In the morning, there’s a parting of the ways. James has, of course, no work to go to. He’s staring in the face of three whole weeks of enforced leave. That’s going to be—well, a problem in itself. But there’s nothing much that can be done to ease the impact of that just now.

There’s something more pressing that needs Robbie’s attention first.

“Try and take it easy today, yeah?” Robbie suggests, on the doorstep. The lad looks absolutely done in still. “I’ll give you a call later.”

Robbie had been up early, although only to find that James was awake before him. Christ, that couch. He maybe should have listened to James after all last night. But it would just have been hard to leave him. A quick hot shower at his own flat will help with the stiffness in his back, anyway.

===

“I do want to level with you, ma’am, I’m not—at liberty to say —but there were extenuating circumstances that I know you’d take into account somehow. If you knew what they were.” She would, Innocent would, if she knew it all, Robbie is still somehow sure of that. “He wasn’t just stressed or unleashing his temper.”

“Yes. You would if you could, wouldn’t you?” Innocent says, thoughtfully, “Tell me? Because you’d do anything to get him off the hook—No, I don’t mean I don’t believe you. I’m just saying—I believe you obviously think you can’t tell me.”

Robbie nods at her, relieved. She frowns at him briefly.

“There is—more formal support he can avail of, you know,” she suggests. “I assume he’s well aware of that?”

And this is exactly why Robbie’s here. “No,” he starts. “Well, yeah, he does know that. But—” This is unexpectedly more difficult than Robbie had thought it would be, putting the suggestion that he’s about to make, into Innocent’s mind, for James. Robbie takes a breath. But he really needs her to agree to this. If the alternative is James having to go to one of those groups or mandatory counselling—well, needs must. "Look, as a suggestion. Instead of any sort of rehabilitation—you could demote him to supervised interrogation only. A higher-ranking officer always in the room. For a probation period.”  But Robbie comes to a halt again because it turns out that this next part is somehow quite a personal wrench to say. “And the higher ranking officer—probably shouldn’t be me.” _Just let him prove himself again. Objectively. In front of any of the inspectors in this station. They’ll soon see how good he is at the job, how he really can handle himself in the face of provocation. He can prove that so there’s no doubt._

There’s a long silence while Innocent’s eyes just search his face. Then—“You think you let him down somehow, don’t you, Robbie?”

“Ma’am?” Robbie stares at her.

“Of course you can be the higher-ranking officer. You won’t always be here when you need James to do an official interview. So he’ll have a range of officers supervising, I should imagine. But of course it can be you, when circumstances allow.”

Does that mean she’s going to go for the idea?

“But, Robbie—that’s a best case scenario. I’ll submit it as a mitigating factor, an argument, if you like, to strengthen his case. That he has his immediate superior’s offer of support in that way. And I’m strongly minded to also recommend counselling as advisory, personally. So that if the panel agreed with my stance on that, it would be up to James if he takes the option up. But these factors—counselling versus probation, I suppose—they’re not the actual crux of the matter. They’re really more of a recommendation that we can implement once the decision has been made. And your plan—it will only be relevant if James is still a sergeant.”

It’s like some of the air has evaporated from the room, to cause this sudden tightening in Robbie’s chest. It must be hearing the possibility finally said aloud in Innocent’s matter-of-fact voice. _Still your sergeant,_ that’s what Robbie hears. _If James is still your sergeant._

Innocent is pulling up something on her computer screen, frowning, now. Possibly some sort of official guidelines. Robbie waits, silently. _You think you let him down, somehow_. Well, he could have made more of an attempt, maybe, to get James to talk, a little sooner, after Zelinsky. Although, Christ, it had been near impossible to get through to him back then. But he could have—not followed up, exactly, after Crevecoeur, because James hadn’t wanted that but—maybe it’s just yesterday, really, when things had just been so crucial _._ He could’ve just followed his instincts, after that phone call, and acted faster in response to James’s changed demeanour. He could have stopped James, dropped a hand on his arm and held him back and gone in himself to that interrogation room.

It’s not guilt, as such. It’s not even a feeling of having let James down. It’s just—he just wishes that he’d managed to know sooner, had somehow let James see he could tell him all of this that he carries and then somehow intervened before it got to this stage. When James now has to go before a disciplinary panel, who will make all sorts of decisions about his future. And James with all this in his head. Because he still can’t quite imagine just how exposed that’s going to make his intensely-private sergeant feel.

“I just wish things had turned out a bit differently, ma'am,” he finds himself saying aloud.

“Don’t we all,” Innocent says with a sigh.


	2. Chapter 2

James looks surprised to see him that evening, when Robbie returns. Hadn’t Robbie said when he left this morning—or maybe he hadn’t. Well, hopefully, it’s more just surprise at how heavily laden Robbie is. Robbie, with a shrug of a shoulder, indicates that it’d be best to take the fragrant bags of Thai takeaway that his fingers are curled around, rather than the box that’s balanced against his own chest.

Once he gets into the flat, he can soon see that his instincts were spot-on. James doesn’t quite know what to do with himself with all this time on his hands and all this hanging over him. Because he’s been for a proper run, it transpires, on casual questioning. That’s despite still looking like death warmed up.

“Not a personal best,” he offers with a shrug in answer to Robbie’s query about how that went then.

It looks, from the number of books spread on his coffee table, as if he’s researching something from multiple sources. He’s not, they’re all fiction. He must have been unable to immerse himself in something the way he very obviously wants to. Worse, though, is the obvious glass of whiskey amongst the books. Robbie had stopped off at home to change, but he’d left work early too—well, not like he isn’t owed time in lieu after their last case—and he’d been the first customer in the Thai restaurant. But he can make a damn good guess that, despite the relatively early hour of the evening, that isn’t James’s first glass.

“Here.” Robbie deposits his box on the breakfast bar.

Robbie’s already been finding it more unsettling than he would have thought himself, this unwelcome limbo waiting to see how things pan out. That empty desk opposite him today—it was an inescapable reminder of all the uncertainty around this. Of the worst case scenarios that do cross his mind. And that are doubtlessly plaguing James’s mind too.

Robbie’s spent his day making his way through the cold case reviews that he’s been assigned in his own partnerless state, his current removal from the active duty roster. He wonders if he’ll have a temporary substitute foisted on him eventually while he waits to see if James’s absence from their office becomes a permanent void. A temporary bagman should be preferable if it gets Robbie back out there. But he feels a strong resistance to the mere thought of it. Having someone beside him who wouldn’t be James. Despite the alternative, despite the fact that the heavy thought of _work_ over the next three weeks is already evoking the unwelcome quiet in his office, the lone tedium of interacting, just on paper, with cases that have ground to some other officer’s frustrated halt. And, Christ, there’s a lot of them.

And then it had occurred to him that those cold cases could have their uses.

“See what you think of this for a theory… ” he says now, joining James over at the counter and starting to prise lids off as James reaches for plates. And James settles into the discussion in something like relief.

===

“Try not to make your connections too inspired,” Robbie warns him, once they’ve eaten and cleared and have spread the contents of a file over James’s breakfast bar. “Herself will be getting suspicious. I’m meant to be coming up with this stuff meself. And she thinks I’m a simple, straightforward old-school copper, remember.”

“Doubt she attained her elevated rank by being _that_ dense,” James observes briefly, without looking up from his work.

Huh. Robbie looks at the top of his head. “It’s a bit trickier, you know,” he finds himself confiding. “When you’re not there to bounce ideas off. You sort of—know how I think, don’t you?” It had genuinely somehow felt like he was getting nowhere with this case for most of this frustrating, restless day. Right up until he’d been hit with the inspiration of bringing the cases to James. Then his brain had seemed to relax a bit. To kick back into gear.

James nods his acknowledgement of this, still with half his attention on the witness statement. Then he comes to a halt, raising his head. “I’d miss—” He stops.

Robbie waits. “Doing this?” he suggests eventually.

“Dunno why I care so much, anyway. I was the one thinking of leaving last year, after all.”

Robbie looks at him, not fooled. They’d both been contemplating leaving last year, after all. Circumstances were—well, a bit different. And it must be dead hard waiting now. Your fate in other peoples’ hands. He doesn’t say that. “It must be different when you’re not planning it, though,” he offers instead.

“It is,” James says rather vehemently. “When somebody else wants to take—something off you—”

Robbie just looks at him. _He feels it the same way. Like me. That they’re going to somehow take him off me. He feels it just like that too._

===

“Keeping him busy, are you?” comes an amused voice from the doorway, as Robbie gathers up his carefully-selected bunch of files, along with the suit jacket it's now too warm to wear, preparatory to knocking off for the day. For the end of the week, really. And slightly early. Yet again.

It’s only Laura watching him, thankfully. Some of his momentary alarm must have made it into his expression because her eyes soften. “No-one else is going to think that,” she assures him. “They’ll just assume it’s you taking your work home. If they assume anything. I mean—it wouldn’t actually occur to most people, Robbie, to spend their time off working illicitly when they’ve been suspended…”

“Aye. Well. We were working on a couple yesterday evening and he’s just been texting today—he was out for a run and suddenly thought there could be a pattern between one of them and something he remembers hearing Grainger was working on a few years back—”

She’s looking pure amusement at him. Then she sobers up. “How’s he doing, anyway?”

Robbie scratches the side of his cheek. He doesn’t actually know the answer to that. “Okay,” he falls back on. Well, James had seemed that bit better the last couple of evenings.

“And you haven’t forgotten tomorrow night, have you?” she reminds him. He had. Bugger. Laura’s having a party for Franco’s birthday. And he’d agreed to go. “No need to look _quite_ so keen,” she remarks, straight-faced.

Robbie tries to compose his expression. “It’s just been quite a week,” he says, rather feebly. “And James—”

“I meant James too, of course. When I said “you” I meant the two of you. Wouldn’t expect you without him. Who else would you slope off early with, after all?”

“Ah, now that was just the once—”

“You—the _two_ of you—virtually hijacked someone else’s call-out that time.” Then she visibly relents. “It’s all right. If you think James isn’t up to it.” There’s a small crease of concern forming on her forehead now. “How are you handling all this, Robbie? You don’t exactly look able for much strenuous socialising yourself.”

“I’m fine. But I think we’d better just—well, tell Franco many happy returns from both of us.”

“Don’t worry. The absence of one of my ex-boyfriends won’t ruin his evening,” Laura reassures him, eyes dancing now.

Robbie restrains himself from grimacing. It’s more true than she knows. Franco sort of eyes Robbie up when they do meet. Robbie tends to pay him no heed. But James, for some reason best known to himself, always finds it most amusing.

Laura turns to go and then turns back. “It’s the weekend, though, Robbie. You could try taking James out, you know. Rather than spending your evenings on—well, whatever’s in those.” She gestures at the files, treating him to a bit of an eyeroll as a parting shot.

It’s not until a bit later, on his way to stop off at home in fact, that something about her phrasing belatedly registers with him. _You could try taking James out. Taking_ James out?

But Robbie never makes it back out of his flat because his doorbell goes as he pulls on a more casual shirt, and there’s James, bags dangling from both hands and a couple of the files under his own arm. He’s bearing the makings of dinner, the means to restock Robbie’s fridge with beer and brimming with all sorts of further impatient ideas to back up his argument. And looking better. He does look better. _At last._ He’s starting to look much more animated again.

And champing at the bit to unleash all those theories at Robbie, it turns out, rather to Robbie’s amusement. Robbie feels the need to put a temporary prohibition on any work-related discussions until James has aptly demonstrated his prowess in Robbie’s kitchen and they’ve eaten and cleared. He doesn’t want James thinking that he’s wanted here just for his input into cases, after all. Well, or for his undoubtedly very welcome cooking skills, either.

He’d rather like James to somehow grasp that it just feels right to Robbie. It feels almost like a relief to think, throughout the long strange days in his quiet office, of seeing James in the evenings. And that’s got sod all to do with James’s inspirations on these cases. It’s not even really about that need to know that James is doing all right. It’s just wanting to see James. Robbie’s rather taken aback by his own thoughts.

“So this idea?” James, having finished drying dishes, is raising hopeful eyebrows.

“Aye. Go on. Restrain yourself, though. Don’t go solving too many of them. Won’t make me too popular round the station,” Robbie jokes, abstracted. Still thinking. About that pull to gravitate back towards James at the end of his rather solitary days.

“Our esteemed colleagues should not object. They should be grateful at any steps taken to right wrongs and gain justice for the victims,” James is saying gravely, settling himself at Robbie’s kitchen table and pulling a file towards him.

Robbie settles himself opposite and raises his own, more sceptical, eyebrows at him. “All right, Batman. That’d be your first reaction, would it? You’d be pleased about those righted wrongs? If Peterson, say, was going through our cases and found something that you’d missed?”

“ _Yes,_ ” says James firmly, after a pause.

“I’ll bet,” says Robbie, much amused by the pause. “You’d get round to feeling glad for the victims, I know, and that’d be your lasting view, but it wouldn’t be your only first reaction. Hope you’re not planning to lie in front of this panel, if you’re this bad at it.”

“Conversational Mandarin,” James mutters abruptly, raising his head from the file to frown over Robbie’s shoulder.

“What?”

“I mean—” He meets Robbie’s eyes. “I’m not always that bad at lying. I mean—sorry. That’s what I mean. For all of that. For lying to you and—”

“Oh, don’t start. That was years ago. We’ll be here till Doomsday, lad, if you start spelling out all the things you’ve ever felt sorry for—”

“Well, just—for what I said then. By the lake.”

Robbie doesn’t have to ask what he means. It was years ago, yes. But it’s funny how some words can stay in your head, despite knowing there was no real intent behind them, that the person who’d said them—“You weren’t yourself, right then,” he says carefully.

“Still. Sorry.” James is flushed and finding this hard enough to say. Maybe it’s best just to acknowledge it. If this is still part of what he carries.

“All right, James.”

James heaves a huge sigh. It really seems to matter to him, getting that across. It must have been playing on his mind together with all of this about Crevecoeur. Despite all the other things that go in his head when he thinks of that accursed place. What he’d said to Robbie back then, that still somehow matters to him in the midst of all this too.

===

The early evening sun is streaming through Robbie’s windows and James, talking rapidly now, is moving around Robbie’s kitchen. He’s setting up for his cooking, but still casting glances over at Robbie to gauge Robbie’s reactions to what he’s saying. Expounding on his latest theory. Although—they haven’t been discussing cases much today. It hadn’t proved too hard to entice James over on a weekend. But it hadn’t proved too hard either to tempt him away from the work, after a decent interval, for a welcome pub lunch and a very enjoyable afternoon wander by the river. _Taking him out_ , Laura’s voice had said in Robbie’s head. Well. If she wants to put it like that.

And now, they’ve landed up back in Robbie’s.

Robbie’s just watching James, not paying much attention to what he’s saying. It seems more important just to—well, he’s going to miss this. If this panel goes as badly as it might for James, it’s going to be right strange not having his sergeant, not having James, show up suddenly at his door, like he has over all the years, lifting a mired case, or an evening, with the discoveries he’s made and staying on drinking beer and just lifting Robbie’s evening, lifting Robbie really, with his presence. It finally startles a thought into the forefront of Robbie’s mind. _I couldn’t imagine you having more of a back seat in my life now. Not having you right there every day? I can’t really picture that any more._

“What?” James has stopped, has stilled under Robbie’s gaze, and is leaning against the counter, all enquiring head-tilt and raised brows, looking at Robbie in amused curiosity.

“I’m just—you don’t ever need an excuse to come over here, lad. You know that, don’t you? Doesn't have to be to do with work. You don’t have to come bearing inspirations.” _Or anything. Just yourself._

James’s doesn’t move, as such, but his whole bearing stiffens. “You think they’re going to demote me,” he says flatly. “Separate us.”

 _Bugger._ Robbie immediately tries to row back. He casts about mentally for some reassurance that’ll make some sense to James. “Look, James. Innocent—she’s fair. You know? In her own head, she is. She wouldn’t be looking to punish me too.” _Just unfortunate that it’s not just up to her and I doubt the rest of that ruddy panel will be considering the effect it’d have on some old inspector losing his sergeant—_

“Punish you?”

“Aye,” says Robbie, still distracted by the thought of that panel and how Innocent has effectively handed over the decision to people Robbie doesn’t really know, people whose stance he can barely guess at. “Well, it’s like I told Laura, before, I wouldn’t want the palaver of house-training another—”

“You told _Laura_ —"

“Oh, hush now,” Robbie is suddenly fully aware of what he’s saying. “Of course I didn’t discuss your disciplinary with her. Or what might happen to us. She knows you’re suspended and why. Like everyone else does. Can’t be helped. But that’s the extent of it. I meant before. I talked to her—back then. On that ruddy case.” Robbie curses himself silently for bringing Crevecoeur up again. “After I put you on leave. Before I quite knew what the case was about.”

“And what did she say?” James asks, rather curiously, staring at Robbie.

“Not much. She more asked me questions. That’s what she does, really.” _Got me thinking. Got me to thinking about how it wasn’t just about me being worried about you. It was about how I’d feel if you left too. And, God, that was years back now. That was just how much I’d have minded even back then._

James straightens up, frowning, and takes a step closer, suddenly intent. “But what did _you_ say?”

“I told her—all right. I told her you were an awkward sod at the best of times.” James’s eyebrows lift and his mouth straightens out, suppressing a flare of amusement. Robbie chuckles suddenly, appreciating the reaction. “But that you’re my awkward sod—”

“What?” All the levity drains from James’s expression.

“You heard me.”

“You said I was your—”

“That’s what I said. And God knows, lad, over the years I’ve come to think that that really _is_ at the best of times—”

But James isn’t listening any more. He takes another step towards Robbie. And now he can’t really come any closer. “You said that _I_ was _your_ —” he murmurs to himself, confirming it. But he’s holding Robbie’s gaze. And, bloody hell, they’re back to pronouns. Pronouns, thinks Robbie, utterly irrelevantly, because he can’t really form a more coherent thought. Because his sergeant, his awkward sod, his warm and fiery-eyed James has brought his hands up to Robbie’s shoulders and is close, very close, so close that all Robbie has to do is move his head a tiny fraction in acquiesce, in surrender, and then they’re kissing.

 

Epilogue:

_Ten days later._

“Leave your phone here, James, all right?”

It’s quiet in the station this evening. Quieter than usual for after hours. The unaccustomed silence around the building seems to have crept into their office, too, despite James’s presence here at last. Well, the seminar room, where James will shortly face that panel, that’s at the far end of the station, and James is to wait here until he’s summoned. So there’s not much left to say. Robbie had given up any pretence at work once James had arrived and is just sitting waiting now. James is leaning against the door frame, waiting for the call. His casual pose is not exactly fooling Robbie. He’s just waiting for his ordeal to commence.

“I have it on silent,” James says now, rather surprised at this instruction.

“Better just to leave it here. Stick it on your desk.” _Let me make damn sure you come back here and you’re not gone off by yourself afterwards._ He knows James won’t go off, really, whatever happens. Not now. Not that he’s finally beginning to grasp quite how much his wellbeing, he himself, matters to Robbie. But memories of that gnawing anxiety of almost three weeks ago are still vivid and everything between them is so new and tentative—

“Sir,” acknowledges James. His eyes, as he casts a glance over at Robbie, say something completely different though. Lord. They’re going to have to have a chat about how the hell to negotiate this new territory in the office. Well, unless the decision is taken out of their hands within the next hour. If it does all goes well, though—well, it’s going to be mighty distracting if James is going to be looking at Robbie like _that_ , like that at _work._

Although—if James has somehow found a well of strength within himself so that he can take a brief moment to amuse himself with his newly-discovered power to thoroughly discomfit Robbie with a look, bare minutes before his hearing—well, he must be about to go into it calmer than either of them had figured he could. If he hadn’t slept all that well last night, well, neither had Robbie, really. They’d rather kept each other company in Robbie’s bed, not exactly discussing this, but just lying there. Together. Rather pleasantly distracting one another at times. So some of James’s fears about the worst that this panel can do to him—maybe recent events have indeed allayed them. That should help him cope with it now. It should.

And there’s James’s desk phone starting up again now.

===

“Well?” But Robbie doesn’t really need to ask. James’s whole demeanour is one of pure relief. “All right.” Robbie gets up, rather stiffly, he registers. He must have been sitting here holding a more tense posture than he’d realised. “Come on home with me, then, and tell me about it.” But he finds he needs the confirmation, after all, as he casts a last look around his office, preparatory to leaving. All those solitary hours in here, recently, with the low thrum of anxiety about what would happen—“Or just tell me first—”

James seems to know what he’s after. “I can come back in on Monday when the three weeks will be up.”

“Back here?”

“Yeah.” And he nods towards that desk that is, thankfully, going to continue to be his desk. “Right back here.”

===

“I’m going to have to have a senior officer supervising in the room for any interrogation that I do. Until Innocent decides otherwise.” James, lying on the couch, with his head in Robbie’s lap, grimaces rather at the prospect. “But besides that.” He heaves a long sigh. “They seemed to see the suspension almost as punishment enough in itself. I didn’t let on, of course, that it’d had its compensations.”

“Solving the odd cold case and…”

“And…” agrees James, reaching up a hand, and starting to massage the back of Robbie’s neck with his fingers. Frowning rather, as he seems displeased to discover the tense muscles that Robbie is still having some trouble striving to relax. “Innocent was—well, still herself. You know. But kind of advocating for me where there was room for it. Pointing to my record and performance appraisals over the years.”

“Well she’s always like that if there’s folk there from outside. Whatever she may do to you in private, she does defend her own.”

“No, I mean she was a bit less severe than I’d expected towards me. Did you…”

“I may’ve had a word,” Robbie says gruffly. “Back then, the day after it happened. That was sort of my suggestion—the supervising officer part. Just to try and stop anything that you’d find even worse being recommended. And I said nothing, absolutely nothing that you wouldn’t want me to say to her.”

“I know.” James’s face is surprised that Robbie would even think he’d doubt that. “Thank you.”

“It was nothing much.”

“No, I mean—thank you. For all of this. Especially—that day. For listening to all that and—I don’t know if I said—”

“Don’t you go thanking me for that. I don’t need thanking just for lending an ear.”

“I don’t want you to think that I take it for granted—”

Robbie studies him. _You’ve just never really had anyone, have you? Just unconditionally yours, instinctively on your side._ “I’d like you to take things for granted a bit if you could,” he suggests. _That I’m here. That I’m not going anywhere. That I’m here if you mess up or just want an ear. That I’m here to be way more than that. And that you can caress me like this. Like I’m someone that belongs to you. I do._

James is frowning a bit more now, though, as he shifts position and lets his exploring fingers make a brief foray further down to the base of Robbie’s neck to where the tension is probably that bit worse. “You didn’t say you’d had to give a witness statement,” he says, tilting his head at Robbie.

“Well, I’d’ve thought you’d have worked that one out for yourself,” Robbie says mildly. _Should maybe have reminded him, in case it came up, though._

“They read it out.”

Christ. “That can’t have been much fun,” says Robbie briefly. He’d had to be brutally honest about it, what he’d seen James do. It had just sounded worse, somehow, all written down in sparse facts. And signed by Robbie. It’s still rather a blur, that bit, his initial attempts at writing it that day.

“Nor for you. It can’t have been much fun for you writing it. That’s what I was thinking, when they were reading it. That none of this has been easy on you, either. You’ve been worried about how this would go for me. More worried than you wanted to let on. I know you have been. And the whole time, since this started, you’ve just been so—” His fingers still and he stops and swallows, seeming almost a bit overcome.

Robbie looks down at him. “Aye, well, it was a while ago, now, writing that. And none of this. I’m fine. It’s not something you need to blame yourself for, lad.”

But James, surprisingly, doesn’t start apologising again. Instead he sits up and swings his feet down onto the floor. “Your turn now,” he says and moves back, angling his body into the corner of Robbie’s couch, so that he’s braced a bit. “Come on,” he instructs. Robbie brings his own feet up, and lets himself rest back against James’s chest. One firm arm comes around his own chest. The now-familiar warmth of James, right against him, immediately begins to have its effect. He registers an ache as his shoulders, which must have been set all day, finally begin to yield. He starts to become aware of just how tired he is. So he lets his head drop back onto James’s shoulder. James’s head tilts a bit over his, a bit more of a shelter.

“Nice?” James asks, after a moment.

“Nice.” It really is. Dead nice. “You do know, though, lad, we are going to be separated anyway. By Innocent. I’d like to see you through this probationary period. But then—well, when you’re back on your feet as a fully-independent sergeant. Re-established. Which won’t take you all that long, I’ll warrant, either. Then we’ll have to tell her. Only fair to, in the circumstances. Although, Christ, that’ll be some conversation…”

James grins, still all relief and disbelief that’s it’s finally over. “We could sell tickets to that,” he suggests. “Round the station. And make Dr Hobson buy two. At top price. She owes us.”

“Oh, she’d happily pay to see it,” mutters Robbie ruefully.

Lying here, like this, against James, James who really is all right again, it’s all such a relief that Robbie really is pure weary. And he doesn’t have to fight it any more. There’s only one more thing he needs to check—

“I’ve taken a couple of days’ leave. While you serve the remainder of your sentence.” His own voice is a bit slowed down as he directs the words out, at James’s ear.

“Have you?” James asks, softly. His fingers are playing gently in Robbie’s hair now.

“Aye. So if you want to just spend a bit of time—No cases. No work. Just us. That sound okay to you?”

Even from this angle, and despite eyelids that are starting to rest shut for more than brief seconds at a time, Robbie can make out that James is obviously fighting a wholly unsuccessful battle to stop the corners of his mouth from lifting into a huge grin. “Just _us_ ,” he repeats. There’s an inflection of pure joy in that last word.

And there’s no further need to resist now. Lying back against James, those deft fingers slow and gentle in his hair, Robbie lets his head relax just a little more on that accommodating shoulder and tuck in a bit further towards James’s neck. He can still hear in his head that joyous “ _us”_ of James’s. _Pronouns,_ Robbie thinks to himself in complete satisfaction as he lets himself drift off at last, _ruddy pronouns._


End file.
